I found this article only a few days ago: it reports that Gerace, a small town in Calabria, put up a plaque last June to celebrate Edward Lear’s two visits to the town. Here is a photograph:

The plaque reads:

In memory
of
Edward Lear
English painter, writer
and traveller
who was here a guest
of the Scaglione family
August 1847
The Municipalty of Gerace
and
The Anglo Italian Club
in Reggio Calabria

The article also mentions a book I did not know of: Il tempo, il viaggio e lo spirito negli inediti di Edward Lear in Calabria by Giuseppe Macrì, based on 21 previously unpublished drawings at Harvard, presumably part of the Houghton Library collection which has been online for some time. Here is a review, in Italian, from direfarescrivere, anno IX, n. 95, novembre 2013.

While we are on the subject of non-English books, Annemarie Schöne’s 1970 book on Nonsense, Englische Nonsense- und Grusel-Balladen: intellektuelle Versspiele in Beispielen und Interpretationen und mit Übertragungen im Anhang (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) is now available for download from Heidelberg University Library. Also, Winfried Nöth’s essay “The Art of Self-Reference in Edward Lear’s Limericks” can now be read on Google Books as part of a collection: Literatur und Lebenskunst: Festschrift für Gerd Rohmann. Ed. Eva Oppermann. Kassel: Kassel University Press, 2006. 131-145.

Of some interest might also be Louise Anemaat’s Natural Curiosity: Unseen Art of the First Fleet (Sydney: Newsouth, 2014), discussing a collection of drawings of Australian animals executed in the 1790s for Aylmer Bourke Lambert and acquired by the 13th Earl of Derby in 1842. A richly-illustrated preview is avaiable on Google Books.

F.O. Morris, Knowsley Hall, c. 1880, colour woodblock print. From F.O. Morris, A Series ofpicturesque views of seats of the noblemen and gentlewomen of Great Britain and Ireland (from Anemaat’s book)

For something lighter, take a look at Anthony Madrid’s version of Edward Lear’s “The Scroobious Pip” and try to identify Anthony’s 3%.

Finally, Andy Packer informs me that highlights from Slingsby’s Ode to Nonsense are now available on Vimeo.